Cyclone Microsystems' PCIe2-2712 is a 4U PCI Express (PCIe) Gen2 Expansion system that supports the addition of up to ten standard height PCI Express I/O cards to a single host computer. Most host computers contain few PCI Express slots making them poorly suited for building complex systems requiring many different I/O boards and co-processor resources. The PCIe2-2712 Expansion System has been designed for applications requiring multiple x8 PCIe I/O and co-processing resources.

The PCIe2-2712 system is composed of three elements: a PCI Express Host Bus-to-Cable Adapter, an Expansion cable, and an Expansion Chassis. After inserting the Host Bus-to-Cable Adapter card into a host computer's x16 PCIe Gen2 slot and connecting the x16 PCIe expansion cable, the PCI host in functionally linked to the expansion chassis at 800 Gb/s. The expansion chassis can be populated with up to ten x8 standard height, single width PCIe boards.

The expansion system's architecture uses low latency PCIe Bus repeaters and a non-blocking PCI Express switch for excellent peer-to-peer I/O bandwidth. For host computers with modern BIOSs, the PCIe2-2712 Expasnion System is recognized by the host system upon boot-up, requires no hardware specific drivers, and is entirely operating system and host processor independent.

The PCIe2-2712 is powered by a single 1200 W AC power supply. The 2712 also supports an optional system monitoring board.

The Expansion system is optionally supported by an Intelligent Expansion Chassis Monitor to report temperature, fan speed and power supply parameters via HTTP or SNMP.

Why use a PCI Express Expansion System?

PCIe2-2712 Block Diagram